LGBT Consumer Index sees record number of respondents

More than 30,300 people took part in the 2009 LGBT Consumer Index this year setting a new record and providing a plethora of information about LGBT consumers.

The online survey was conducted by San Francisco-based Community Marketing Inc. from July 30 through Sept 15. Questions included those about spending habits, living arrangements and the political issues most important to the GLBT community.

Results from 229 O&AN respondents, who took the survey through a portal on outandaboutnewspaper.com, show that 76% of participants believe employment non-discrimination to be the most important issue for LGBT people and their elected officials to act on.

CMI provided O&AN with only the data from those 229 respondents at this time but said a full report of the data representing responses from all 30,300 participants should be available later this year. (The identity of each respondent remains confidential and was not released to O&AN.)

Data from the report (available here) shows that the more than 80% of O&AN respondents were 30 or older, 84% were employed at least part-time with a slight majority (22.8%) of them making $50,000 to $75,000 a year.

The survey also attempted to measure the effect the recession had on respondents, showing that nearly half of O&AN respondents cut back on their spending with 74% of them dining out less often and 54% purchasing more store brands. About 30% said their spending stayed the same.

A large majority of participants also said that a company’s ’employment non-discrimination policies’ and ‘support for LGBT organizations’ have a strong influence on their buying-decisions. View the full report here.